A Post From the 2nd City

After many request (all by the same person and coincidentally our only reader, yes you Diane) we are finally updating our blog.
The last 2 weeks (and for the next 2) we have been living in Chicago (the medical district) while Jen does a rotation in Emergency Medicine. These weeks have brought there own share of excitement adjustment and as always stress. After the first couple of days Jen has felt more comfortable working in the ER here and has had the privilege of working with some great doctors. The stress of these weeks has largely stemmed largely from the process of completing Jen's application to residency. I personally have read her CV and Personal Statement well over 10 times. Which sadly is still probably not as many times as she has. Along with this process has been the stress of working with the right ER docs here to get a letter of recommendation as well as narrowing in on the programs that we(she but we ...it feels like i am applying i have been on ERAS so much) would like to apply to.

This "narrowing" has left us with 30 programs that will be graced with the presence of Jennifer Lee Lowry Erbes' Residency Application. Most the programs are in the Midwest(IC, Chicago, KC, Omaha, Indy, Twin Cities, and St Louis (shout-out to Luke at WashU) we have also applied to programs in Texas, Arizona, North Carolina, and Virginia.

I have been studying for the GRE to attempt to raise my score, to open up possibilities wherever we end up next year. I have also been taking Statistics through the University of Iowa. My comps for my MA our on Oct 31.

Other then that we have done a couple "Chicago" things namely; went to the Field Museum, Navy Pier, we have been running along the lake several times, we tried to go to a Andy's Jazz Club but Jen forgot her ID so we went to Gino's East Pizza which was fun, but slightly less Jazzy. We tried to drive downtown once that was stupid, we now take the L(blue line western stop). We also got to go out to eat in Oak Park at a really good wine and cheese place with my cousin Kristin and her husband Mark.

Over the next 2 weeks we hope to see more of the city maybe hit a Cubs game, and I may run a half-marathon.

I have taken a few pics but i do not have my cord to put them on the computer.

City life seems to come with a large number of both "pros" and "cons" weighing them is the challenge. Everything is close but takes awhile to get to... there tends to be a lot of people around. That said one of the goals of this month is to gauge whether we would like doing this for 3 or 4 years, I think we have both gone back and forth both coming to the conclusion that it could work if it is where we are led.

Sometimes it is hard having so many uncertainties(where are we going to live? what are we going to do?) with so much of it seeming out of our control. However becoming more apparent is the reality that we wouldn't know what we would do if we did control it.
Perhaps our curse is our blessing.

-Ben (&Jen <><)